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Alexander Residence

Monday, 20 December 2010

The one where I am a playwright

Severe writer's block today, not on here.  No, it appears that today, when I am supposed to be doing "creative writing" I would much rather be blogging.  I am doing an OU Creative Writing course.  My task is to adapt the short story I wrote for my first assignment in to a film or a stage or radio play.  I should be able to do this, I studied Drama, I taught Drama and Film.  But taking plays or films apart, or teaching other people to do it, is proving to be a very different art to putting them together. 

The biggest problem is I have a ghost in my story.  I am scared stiff of putting her on stage as having a ghost on stage has so much potential for naffness.  I know it can be done, but it is a challenge.  I just keep getting haunted by awful visions like this:


I think it could be a good film, I am thinking of Sixth Sense.  It could also be a radio play, but I am only just admitting that my Radio One days are over and that Radio Four might be good listening (I know...I have been missing out), so I can't say it's a medium I know in the same depth.

At the moment I have so many different versions in my notebook it is beginning to look like a series of Friends.  I've also been reading Alan Ayckbourn's Crafty Art of Playmaking.  It's a very useful book but stylistically I am not a huge Ayckbourn fan and I fear his influence is rapidly turning my work into a farce.  Anyway, these are my favourites:

The one where the ghost haunts through the radio while her husband is on a first date and he smashes the radio.

The one where the ghost comes home to find her husband with a new girlfriend but they can't see her

The one where the ghost comes home to find her husband with a new girlfriend and they can see her

The ins and outs of what ghosts can and can't do is a minefield too.  Walk though doors? Be heard? Be seen? How do they travel? 

So anyway, help me out here, which title jumps out at you? 
Radio? Film? Stage?
Any good examples of ghosts in plays or films you can think of to inspire me?









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